We describe below ten projects in the REU's three research areas and
provide links to the web pages of the associated faculty mentors. We expect
that nine of these projects will be offered to prospective REU participants
in 2018.

Astronomy

Mentor:Andrew BakerProject: Probing Galaxy Evolution Through Stacked Detections of
Interstellar Gas and Dust Description:
Determining how galaxies' interstellar gas and dust content varies as a
function of mass, environment, and redshift is an important prerequisite for
understanding how galaxies evolve over cosmic time. An important step
forward will occur in 2018, with the completion of South Africa's powerful
new MeerKAT array of radio telescopes and the start of a
several-thousand-hour survey of galaxies' neutral atomic hydrogen gas out to
a redshift z ~ 1.4. Because this LADUMA survey will target a region of the sky in which the
redshifts for several thousand galaxies have already been measured at
optical wavelengths, it will be possible to "stack" the MeerKAT data
at large numbers of positions and redshifts in order to achieve statistical
detections of neutral atomic gas in well-defined samples of galaxies, each of
which would be too faint to detect individually. In this project, the REU
student will use existing optical observations of the LADUMA field and
computational modeling to define mass-selected samples of galaxies suitable
for stacking, which will then be used to probe the evolution of their
interstellar gas and dust over the last nine billion years.

Mentor:Jack HughesProject: The Most Massive Galaxy Clusters in the Observable UniverseDescription:
We have begun a comprehensive multi-wavelength follow-up program utilizing
new and archival observations across the electromagnetic spectrum aimed at
confirming several hundred unconfirmed high-significance galaxy cluster
candidates detected by the Planck satellite. These cluster candidates
were detected through the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect, in which hot
electrons in the intracluster medium inverse-Compton scatter photons from the
Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. The SZ effect produces a mass-selected
sample that is essentially independent of distance. The REU student will be
involved in characterizing the new clusters using newly acquired optical and
near infrared imaging from 4-m telescopes in Chile and Arizona, optical
spectroscopy with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), archival and
new observations from Swift, Chandra, XMM-Newton, and
other X-ray missions, infrared observations from WISE and 2MASS, and
other sources as appropriate. If time permits, the REU student will also
explore the effects of different assumptions about the cluster mass-observable
scaling relation on the cosmological constraints derived from Planck
clusters.

Mentor:Chuck KeetonProject: Focusing Cosmic Telescopes on the Distant Universe Description:
Studying galaxy formation in the young universe is one of the frontiers of
observational cosmology. Distant galaxies are small and faint, but massive
clusters of galaxies can act as "cosmic telescopes" that magnify the sources
and make them easier to detect. Our group studies this gravitational lensing
using data from the Hubble Frontier
Fields program and other observational campaigns. In this project, the
REU student will quantify how clusters magnify distant sources and
examine how that magnification affects our view of high-redshift galaxies.

Mentor:Carlton PryorProject: Characterizing the Space Motions of the Satellite Galaxies of
our Milky Way Galaxy with GaiaDescription:
The number of satellite galaxies around our Milky Way Galaxy and their
distributions in space and luminosity are considered important tests
of galaxy formation models. While simulations based on the standard
cold dark matter cosmology now mostly pass these tests, an apparent
planar distribution of the satellites remains hard to explain. In
April 2018, the second data release from the Gaia mission will provide
a position, parallax, and proper motion for about 1 billion stars down to
a G magnitude of 20. In this project, the REU student will use these
data along with existing proper motions for 18 satellites (about half
measured by our group using the Hubble Space Telescope) to
study the motions of the satellites around our Galaxy. The long-term goal
is to compare these motions to those predicted by simulations
of galaxy formation, and thus to find new ways to test these simulations.

Nuclear and high energy physics

Mentor:Amit LathProject: Research with the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment at the
Large Hadron Collider Description:
High energy particle physics is an exciting field, filled with many
yet-to-be-answered questions about the world around us. The highest energy
ever collider in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), collides protons
at a high energy and provides us with the tools to answer some of these
questions. State-of-the-art technology used by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)
detector at the LHC plays a key role in this effort. The REU student working on
this project will have the opportunity to work on a range of possible searches
for new particles and new phenomena such as those predicted by supersymmetry
in current CMS data, as well as help design innovative new search techniques
for the challenging environment of the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).

Mentor:Jacquelyn Noronha-HostlerProject: Squeezing Nature's Most Perfect Fluid Description:
Instants after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with the Quark Gluon
Plasma (QGP) — the most perfect fluid known to humanity. Currently, in
state-of-the-art high-energy nuclear physics experiments, "Little Bangs" are
created to reproduce the primordial QGP on Earth by smashing
two gold ions into each other at nearly the speed of light. These
experiments are exploring densities that exist nowhere in nature, and the
question still remains if the QGP acts as a nearly perfect
fluid at these densities. The REU student will explore different ways to
numerically compute the viscosity of the QGP fluid at large
densities, in order to make direct theoretical comparisons with experimental
results.

Mentor:Sevil SalurProject: Investigating Properties of Quark Gluon Plasma with Heavy Ion
Collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider Description:
Quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the fundamental theory of the strong force,
predicts the liberation of quarks and gluons (partons) to create a new phase
of matter, the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). During the last 10 years,
experiments performed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) tested
this prediction and explored the properties of this novel form of matter.
It beceme evident that in relativistic heavy ion collisions, the
conditions are met to produce the hot and dense strongly interacting medium.
While the naive interpretations of QCD calculations suggested that this QGP
should behave like a dilute gas, the experimental results provided evidence
that it behaves more like a nearly "perfect" liquid that is opaque to the
passage of colored partons. At both RHIC and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC),
heavy ion collisions are studied to explore new and different regions of
the phase diagram of nuclear matter. In these collisions, a wide variety of
internal probes such as jets became available over a broad kinematic range.
Once finalized, these new measurements will quantify the fundamental
properties of QGP. In this project, the REU student will focus on jet
production as a diagnostic tool for determining the properties of the hot QCD
matter. S/he will reconstruct jets in relativistic heavy ion collisions
collected by the STAR detector at RHIC. These results will then be compared
with quenched Monte Carlo simulations for a more complete, quantitative, and
discriminatory picture of jet quenching observed at RHIC and will be
compared to similar results at LHC to aid in our fundamental understanding.

Mentor:Sunil SomalwarProject: A Search for Vector-like Leptons Using CMS Multilepton
Data Description:
With the Higgs boson in hand, it has become very clear that there must
be new physics beyond Standard Model that explains several questions
not addressed by the Standard Model. For example, why do electrons,
muons, and the tau lepton, i.e., the three charged leptons in the
Standard Model, have the masses that they do? One possibility is that
these charged lepton masses are decided by their quantum mechanical
mixing with massive "vector-like" leptons (VLLs) that are not part of
the Standard Model. This scenario allows for a simple understanding
of the mass hierarchy among the three generations of leptons in the
Standard Model. Such new particles are common predictions of many
well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model, such as composite
Higgs models and warped extra dimensions. The cleanest signature of
the existence of such new particles would be via their decay to the
normal leptons of the Standard Model, particularly, the heaviest tau
lepton. If VLLs are produced in the energetic proton-proton collisions
at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), we would observe their presence in
excess production of three or more promptly-produced leptons in collision
data.
The REU student working on this project will learn the CMS multilepton
search strategies developed at Rutgers, simulate the VLL signal
using tools such as MADGRAPH, evaluate the sensitivity of the search
to the signal, and finally, quantitatively search for the signal in
the LHC data.

Nanophysics

Mentor:Jak ChakhalianProject: Artificial Quantum Materials with Strong InteractionsDescription:
Recently, "designer" quantum materials, grown in atomic layer-by-layer
fashion, have been realized, sparking groundbreaking new scientific insights.
These artificial structures, such as complex oxide
heterostructures, are highly interesting building blocks for realizing emergent
quantum states and a new generation of technologies — if we can access,
study, and ultimately control their phases under technologically relevant
temperature and pressure. For this project, the REU student will participate
in the design and growth of multilayer materials composed of atomic layers of
superconductors, magnets, and ferroelectrics and will be responsible for
advanced characterization, data modeling, and analysis of magneto-transport
data.

Mentor:Weida WuProject: Spectroscopic Imaging of Surface States in Topological
Quantum Materials Description:
Topology is pervasive in physics, especially condensed matter physics, where
it underpins many robust phenomena. Recently, topology has been applied to
the classification of band structures and electronic properties, resulting in
new quantum states of matter such as topological insulators (TIs) and
semi-metals (TSMs). These topological quantum states of matter have opened
up an unprecedented paradigm of realizing exotic quasi-particles (e.g.,
Weyl and Majorana fermions) that had been speculated but not observed to
exist in particle physics, leading to unconventional phenomena such as
quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE), surface states with Fermi arc, chiral
anomaly, chiral magnetic effect, and non-abelian quantum computing. The REU
student will participate in the on-going exploration of
several topological quantum systems such as magnetic topological insulators
and Dirac or Weyl semimetals, which might host some of these exotic
quasi-particles. The real-space electronic modulation due to the interference
of topological surface states will be visualized using scanning tunneling
microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS).